Interactionism & Labelling Theory

Question 1

What does Becker say about deviance?

Answer 1

• No such thing as a deviant act, act only becomes deviant when people percieve it as such
• Deviance is the result of a label being successfully applied

Question 2

What does Becker say about laws and rule makers

Answer 2

Moral entrepreneurs, people who lead a moral ‘crusade’ to change the law
This has to effects:
* the creation of a new group of ‘outsiders’ or deviants who break the new rule
* the creation or expansion of a social control agency to enforce rule and impose labels on offenders

Question 3

How can justice be negotiated?

Answer 3

• Cicourel
• Found that the police had typifications of what the typical criminal was like, this led them to focus on certain types when stopping people
• Other agencies of social control enforce this (courts, probation officers) - thought poverty was a cause of criminal behaviour
• Justice is negotiable - m/c arrested, less likely to be charged, backgroud did not fit ‘typical delinquent’ his parents would be more likely to successfully negotiate on his behalf
• Less likely to be criminally prosecuted

Question 4

What are the effects of labelling?

Answer 4

• Lemert
• Primary deviance - deviant acts that have not been publically labelled
• Secondary deviance - further deviance that results from acting out the label

Question 5

What is master status?

Answer 5

• Lemert
• Secondary deviance is the result of a societal reaction of labelling
• Being publically labelled as a criminal can involve being humiliated, shunned, excluded from normal society
• Once someone is labelled, others may see her in terms of her label
• This becomes her master status, or controlling identity, overriding all others
• In the eyes of the world, any other characteristics are no longer relevant - an outsider

Question 6

what is a deviant career?

Answer 6

secondary deviance is likely to produce a negative reaction from society and reinforce deviants ‘outsider’ status

Question 7

evidence to support deviant career

Answer 7

• Young
• Study of hippy marijuana users in Notting hill
• Initially, the drugs were peripheral to their lifestyle (primary deviance)
• However, prosecution and being labelled by the control culture (police) led to the hippies increasingly seeing themselves as outsiders
• Retreated into closed groups, began to develop deviant subculture
• Drugs became a cental activity attracting further attention from the police creating a self fulfilling prophercy

Question 8

evaluation of deviant career

Answer 8

• Dawes & Rock
• Cannot predict whether someone who has been labelled will follow a deviant career, because they are always free to choose not to deviant further

Question 9

Deviance amplification spiral

Answer 9

• Process where attempting to control deviance leads to higher levels of deviance

Question 10

Labelling & criminal justice policy

Answer 10

• Triplett
• Increasing tendency to see young offenders as evil
• Criminal justice system has re-labelled status offences such as truancy more serious offences resulting in harsher punishments
• Increase in offending

Question 11

2 types of shaming

Answer 11

• Braithwaite
• Disintigrative shaming - where the crime & the criminal are labelled as bad and the offender is excluded from society
• Reintigrative shaming - labels the act, but not the actor ‘done a bad thing, not a bad person’
• Found that crime rates tended to be lower in societies where reintigrative shaming is the dominant way of dealing with offenders

Question 12

The meaning of suicide

Answer 12

• Douglas
• Official suicide stats are socially constructed
• Tell us about the activities of the people who construct them, rather than the real rate of crime or suicide in society
• Whether a death can be labelled as accidental or suicide is dependent on the negotiations between social actors such as the coroner, family, friends

Question 13

Coroners’ definitions

Answer 13

• Atkinson
• Impossible to know what meanings the dead give to their deaths
• Focuses on how coroners reach their verdict about what to label as death as
• Their ideas of a ‘typical suicide’ were important, certain methods of death (hanging), circumstances of death, life historu were seen as typical suicides

Question 14

Paranoia as a self fulfilling prophercy

Answer 14

• Lemert’s study of paranoia
• Some people don’t easily fit into groups, as a result of this primary deviance, others label this person as odd and begin to exclude them
• Negative response - becomes secondary deviance
• People have further reason to exclude them
• Confirms his suspicion that people are conspiring against him - psychiatric intervention
• Label of mental patient becomes his master status

Question 15

evalution of labelling theory

Answer 15

• deterministic
• assumes once someone is labelled, a deviant career is inevitable
• Fuller observed a group of high-achieving black girls who were negatively stereotyped by teachers and labeled as underachievers. Rather than internalizing these labels, the girls resisted them and used their anger as motivation to prove their teachers wrong.